


Mercies

by De_Nugis



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Ghost Magda, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sam and Grief, Sam's Powers, Suicidal Thoughts, s14
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-14 17:05:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18480589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/pseuds/De_Nugis
Summary: Sam investigates a haunting at a Missouri rest stop.





	Mercies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wingstocarryon (wings_of_crows)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wings_of_crows/gifts).



> The creepy hymn is 100% genuine.
> 
> Written for wingstocarryon for spnspringfling.
> 
> See end of work for spoilery note.

_Mysterious deaths, rest stop, Pleasant Valley, Missouri. Haunting?_

Sam makes a mental note to tell Nathan to give more details and write legibly. Then he remembers. The jab of pain is familiar, expectedly unexpected, like the kick of alcohol after you take a shot. Sam makes an entry on his spreadsheet instead.

It’s a useless exercise, checking out the maybe-cases his people had gathered. Sam’s doing it anyway. He’s not being unreasonable. He leaves himself time to rest. He shuts down the laptop at midnight on non-hunt nights and doesn’t start it up again till seven.

On hunts he can be more flexible. He doesn’t have to lie in the dark till it’s time to get up. He gets out of bed at 4:30, leaves a note for Dean in the kitchen, and heads out for Missouri just before five. 

 

The sheriff is a short, intense woman with grey hair, not far from retirement, Sam guesses. But her voice is crisp and vigorous. 

“Here’s what you’re looking for, Agent. Four deaths. All in the women’s room at the highway rest stop. First was a teenage girl, a couple years back. She was shot, execution style. We never caught the shooter. The other three, afterwards, that’s where it gets weird. Exact same MO, exact same wounds, but no bullets. Like the bullets plowed into their brains and evaporated.”

“Could the bullets have been removed? Could you have been wrong, about the cause of death?”

“I know what a gunshot wound looks like, Agent. I’ve seen enough of them. Our medical examiner is no slouch. No one removed the bullets. They just weren’t there.”

“Any local theories? Odd happenings? Stories?”

The sheriff gives him a cynical look, like she knows exactly what he’s asking.

“No one paid much attention, the first death. But three more? No one on caught on camera? Bullet wounds with no bullets? That qualifies as odd happenings, yeah. People got talking. The rest stop’s closed down, now.”

Sam decides to go direct. 

“Do you think it’s haunted?”

Their stuff, it’s getting to be an open secret. They’re going to have to figure that out, sometime. 

“I’m agnostic. And right now I’m on my way home. Anything else I can do for you, Agent?”

“Files on the victims. Especially the first one, the girl. Who was she? Local?”

“Out of state. Passenger on a bus. Her name was Magda Peterson. Here.”

Sam flips the file open automatically. Magda’s face, just the same, except for the neat, blackened hole in her forehead.

He looks at it for a few long moments. 

“Are you all right, Agent?” says the sheriff.

“I’m fine,” says Sam.

 

There’s yellow tape strung here and there at the rest spot, like a haphazard spider’s web. Sam ducks under it and goes around the side where the restrooms are. The door to the women’s room is locked. Sam gets out his picks, then freezes. The lock’s turning on its own with a sharp clunk. The door swings open. A thread of a voice inside is singing.

_Why should we tarry when Jesus is pleading_  
_Pleading for you and for me_  
_Why should we linger and heed not his mercies_  
_Mercies for you and for me._

Mercies. Sam waits for a not-bullet to rip through his brain. Nothing happens. He goes in. 

The room is shadowy, one dim bulb. The door shuts and locks behind him.

“Magda,” Sam says. 

The air wavers. In the crime scene shots in her file she was wearing regular clothes, jeans. Now she’s back in the rough white shift she’d worn at home. She’s bent in front of the sink like it’s an altar. 

Sam sets down the kerosene and the salt.

“Magda, it’s, uh, Sam. You remember me?”

“I remember you. You were nice. You said I’d be OK.”

He tries to keep people safe. But he lets them slip. He always lets them slip.

“I’m sorry,” says Sam. “Magda, I’m so sorry. I should have checked up on you.”

Magda turns around. 

“Checking up wouldn’t have helped. It’s happening again, isn’t it? I’m hurting people. That’s why you’re here.”

“Anything that’s happened isn’t your fault, Magda. I’m here to help you.” 

And why shouldn’t that be true? Why shouldn’t they help her? They have Jack. They don’t know the limits of Jack’s powers. It doesn’t have to be salt and burn. Why shouldn’t Sam fix this one? He leans forward.

“Listen, Magda, I’ve got a, a friend. He’s, he has powers, like us. Only more. I think he can help you.” The price is something they can figure out later. For now, concentrate on logistics. The file said Magda’s body was cremated. She’s probably held by blood, blood in the grout in the tiles. Sam has the crime scene photos. He can figure out what bit of floor to dig up. He can take it back in the car. “I just need to take you back. You’re, uh. You know that you’re dead?”

Magda looks around at the shadowy restroom, mirror, toilet, sink, like she’s seeing it for the first time, the anonymous place where she died.

“Have I gone to hell? Is this hell?” she says.

“You’re not evil, Magda,” says Sam, “you’re not going to hell. Anyway, hell’s not a bathroom.”

Magda suddenly smiles, an impish, living smile. For a moment Sam sees a teenager, someone who got to live, to escape that basement and find stupid things funny.

“So you’re trying to tell me that this is heaven, then? That _heaven_ ’s a rest stop bathroom?” she says.

Sam grins back at her. She’s still in there. Someone’s still in there. This isn’t some vengeful spirit.

“Heaven sucks,” he says, “but not to a rest-stop-bathroom extent. This is not where you’re meant to be. That’s why we’re breaking you out.” They break people out of hell. Breaking them out of haunting a bathroom is nothing. 

“Why didn’t I go where I was supposed to go?” she says. “Why didn’t I go, when I died?”

“I’m not sure,” says Sam. “Sometimes things go wrong. There should have been a Reaper. There should have been someone to help you.”

Magda’s eyes shift skittishly. Sam can’t stop looking at the tiny black hole above them.

“There was, I think there was someone. I think I remember. I didn’t know them. I didn’t, I didn’t know if I should believe them. And I didn’t want to go to hell. I was scared. I don’t want to go to hell.”

Every person in Magda’s life betrayed her. Why should she have trusted a Reaper?

“You won’t,” says Sam. “That’s not going to happen. And what did happen, we’re going to fix it.”

“I stayed and people died,” says Magda. “I know they died. I couldn’t stop it. It would just, it just started up, like a film playing, but it was in their heads, I put it in their heads. And they died. I have to go. I have to go so no one else can get hurt.”

A psychic ghost replaying her death. That makes sense, sort of. Bullet wounds without bullets.

“Magda, listen, you’re not a vengeful spirit. You haven’t lost yourself. It’s just, it’s just your powers acting up. You can fight this, Magda. Let me help you. Trust me, please.” 

Only then he’ll have to ask Jack to bring her back, to lose a bit more of his soul. Jack’s another life slipping through Sam’s fingers, another face on the bulletin board in Sam’s mind. Sam trades a lot of lives for the few he saves.

Magda turns, like his doubt broke his grip on her, like he blinked and she got away. She crouches in front of the sink, singing again.

_Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing_  
_Passing for you and for me._  
_Shadows are gathering, deathbeds are coming,_  
_Coming for you and for me._

Sam feels the lighter slide out of his pocket. It flies into Magda’s hand.The salt bag bursts. Rock salt bounces and skitters like hailstones. The kerosene can tilts and spills. The smell gives Sam an instant headache. He hears the lighter grate. 

For you and for me, Sam thinks. Magda locked the door. Maybe Sam could unlock it and get out. But the least he can do is sit with her while she goes, like he did a couple months back with Jack. He slides down against the wall. He’s sweating, heart thudding, fear climbing his throat at the prospect of pain and not being able to breathe. It’s stupid. Magda died, Maggie died, so many people have died. Sam has died, but it still gets him sometimes, this terror he should have got past of the dying part of death. Even now, when it’s right, when it’s kind, when it’s keeping someone company, he hates it.

The lighter touches the floor. The whole half of the room by the sink goes up in a swift whuff of fire. Sam can see Magda’s face through it, scared. Sam concentrates on looking steady. He wishes he knew something, songs or poetry, something for her to have instead of those creepy hymns. He’s lucky. He has things he can think of now, the old green cooler, Dean fixing the car, a swimming hole in Kentucky they stop at sometimes in summer where the water is always cold. Magda doesn’t have things like that. Her family kept her in a basement and gagged her with hymns. 

Sam’s head is swimming with heat. Magda’s come to sit in front of him. He can see fire through her. He gropes for something, anything he can put between her and the fire.

“There’s, uh,” Sam says, and breaks off, coughing. He slides down further, where the air is clearer, and curls against the wall. “Me and my brother, we went on a hunt in Boston a while back. And we were driving along in the city and a turkey wanders into the street, right in front of our car. Dean’s car. A big-ass wild turkey, just expecting us to brake for it while it strolls. Dean had this look on his face.” 

Is that the best anecdote Sam can produce in the hour of his death? He can’t even describe Dean’s expression for her. You’d have to know Dean and his car and how it strikes at the heart of Dean’s worldview, a turkey unimpressed by the Impala. Sam finds himself smiling. Magda smiles tentatively back.

“You don’t have to stay with me,” she says. Her edges are flickering. The flame must be reaching whatever old blood holds her.

“It’s OK,” says Sam, “I’m OK.” It’s true. The pain’s bad on his hands and his face, even through his clothes, but he likes the white noise of the flames and it’s good not being alone. 

Magda shakes her head. 

“I don’t want anyone else to die because of me,” she says. “Maybe, maybe this is what makes it not bad, like you said, to be what I am, what I was. If I save someone.”

“Magda,” says Sam. There’s no way to save him. She shouldn’t feel bad about that. She isn’t the one who failed.

Magda isn’t listening. Her eyes are closed and she’s raised her arms. Like that bible story, Joshua, was it? holding back the sun. The heat cuts abruptly, like a wall’s dropped into place. Magda is glowing, translucent, little wisps of her breaking off and fading. Her face is single-minded with concentration. The lock clicks and the door flies open. 

“Wait,” says Sam, “no,” but force grips and lifts him, tumbles him out the door. He falls onto asphalt. The door slams shut. 

“No!” shouts Sam again. He throws himself against the door. It doesn’t budge. He can hear the roar of the flame. He backs up a few yards and hurls himself again. Nothing. He sags to his knees. 

Magda used her powers to save him. He reaches into his mind, hurls his _NO_ at the door. The door bursts inward and shatters. But there’s no face inside any more, no flickering shape. There’s nothing left in there but fire.

 

“You need to get to a hospital, Agent,” says the sheriff. Her car is parked behind a bunch of fire trucks and an ambulance, all at a distance from the rest stop. Sam’s still seeing green and blue blobs from the fireball when the gas tank under the pumps blew. Overkill, for a salt-and-burn. Now there are huge hoses in play and the fire has sunk to sullen black and red.

“I’m fine,” says Sam. His hands and his knees are shaking with a fine tremor, his head is splitting, his face feels like he’s walked through a desert for days, but Cas can fix all that when Sam gets home. All he wants now is to be alone in the car. 

The sheriff gives him a look.

“I called the FBI,” she says. “Your name isn’t in their files. They aren’t conducting an investigation here. Tell me, Agent Mulder, has no one but me ever _checked_?”

“You shouldn’t have any more bulletless bullet wounds,” says Sam. It’s getting to be an open secret. He can’t deal with that right now. “But here. If anything weird crops up, call one of these numbers. You’ll get someone can help.” He keeps a few of these cards in the back of his wallet. They have his number, Dean’s, Jody’s. And Maggie’s, still.

The sheriff puts the card away.

“All right,” she says, slowly. “I’m making a judgment call here, letting you go. Not just on your need for medical attention. But all right. Drive safe. Get to a doctor. Take care of yourself … Agent.”

“I will,” Sam lies. He folds himself into the car. When he puts his hands on the wheel the world lurches sickly. His palms are blistered. 

The sheriff’s gone. Sam sparks the ignition with a tendril of thought. He lets his hands hover and steers onto the road. It’s easy, effortless, not touching the wheel. It’s like he’s skimming over the ground, flying, though the sound of tires is still there, a white noise, like the fire. 

Just after noon Sam comes to a railway crossing. He stops for a bit on the tracks. There isn’t a train. He imagines one, screaming whistle and huge rush of weight. There’d be the bite and crush of metal, the snap of his neck, maybe, or blood filling his mouth. Nothing claws in his throat at the thought. He feels it again, that weightlessness. Not that he’s planning to get hit by a train. But if he needs it, hunting, he has this now. Magda gave him this, too.

**Author's Note:**

> I went with CNTW because, while there is no death of a character who is major in canon, Magda is a major character in the fic and there is no fix-it.


End file.
